Her feet could only carry her the few steps it took to escape out the back door of the townhouse and into the cold night air.
Never—never had she encountered a ruder man.
The frosty air wrapped her bare shoulders and chest, but it did nothing to quell the steam rising off her body. Stepping to the side of the door on the wide top step, she collapsed back against the smooth stone of the wall behind her.
That had been the largest number of words she had ever spewed forth in one breath, and she was still panting, still trying to fill her lungs back up with air.
But the tirade was worth it.
Disrespect her, she could accept that—she had accepted it a hundred times before with a serene smile on her face. But to disrespect her friends? To disrespect the Revelry’s Tempest and everything it was?
Too far.
During the last nine years she had watched both of her best friends move forward with their lives after tragedy. Move forward with marriages and children and into happiness.
They had their happiness.
And she had hers—the Revelry’s Tempest.
Her world. Her child.
And no one disparaged her child.
{ Chapter 3 }
Rorrick plucked a withered, crispy leaf from the branch brushing his shoulder. Most of the trees in Hyde Park had dropped their leaves, but not the red oak he stood next to. He looked down at the orange-brown leaf, twisting the stem in his fingers as he watched the web of its dried veins spin.
Not in England a month and he had already become what he most feared.
An ass.
It didn’t matter that Rorrick had spent an hour apologizing profusely to Lady Alton the day after her ball. He had succumbed to it. Succumbed to the place where he felt entitled to rush judgment on little basis other than surface appearance.
The surface of the Revelry’s Tempest had told him it was a whorehouse thinly disguised as a gaming hell. And the surface of Lady Desmond was so striking, it was almost unthinkable she was neither a wife nor a courtesan.
He had made two quick judgments that he was utterly wrong about.
Layers. There were always layers. He knew that. He lived by that.
Or at least he always had.
He hadn’t paused, hadn’t taken a breath since arriving in England. Between poring over the books and holdings of the Vandestile estate and his entry into English society—a necessary, but tedious requirement in order to get anything done in this blasted country—he’d had no time to gather his thoughts.
And somewhere along the way an innate privilege had wormed into his subconscious, eating away at his control. Eating away at the one thing he had always refused to become. A judgmental imbecile.
After his initial apology to Lady Alton, Rorrick had then spent the entire evening attempting to convince her that he would do no further damage to Lady Desmond when he saw her next.
If he saw her next.
If Lady Alton allowed it.
He had garnered enough of the machinations of London society to know that the next time he spoke with Lady Desmond, it would have to be with Lady Alton’s blessing.
And Lady Alton was tough. If all Lady Desmond had told him in the library was true, he had underestimated just how very much Lady Alton had contributed to the Vandestile estate. She wasn’t just a Vandestile widow. She was the whole reason the estate still existed.
He owed her a great deal.
Rorrick looked across the park.
In a circular court of granite paving stones, Lady Alton now sat with Lady Desmond on a wrought iron bench. Pigeons chased bread crumbs at their feet and the two women had laughter on their lips. Lady Alton wore a dark, military-inspired full-length pelisse, while Lady Desmond’s three-quarter maroon-hued pelisse wrapped her cream walking dress and cut in along her waist, highlighting her slender figure. Both wore poke bonnets that curved down along their ears, the front brims deep enough to keep their faces in the shadows from the sun that sporadically dipped behind long grey clouds.
While not a direct invitation, Lady Alton had nonetheless mentioned she was to meet Lady Desmond in the park by the lead sculpture of Nereus. A monstrosity of artwork, the Greek god of the sea sat on a whale. Nereus’s mouth was open wide to the sky, water spewing upward to the heavens.
Rorrick’s head cocked to the side as he studied the fountain. Maybe the upward spray was too forceful, as the spewing water looked like one long, unending spit coming from the Nereus’s mouth. Maybe the water had been meant to trickle from the side of his mouth, a slow drool. Rorrick wasn’t sure which would be the least offensive to watch.
He shook his head, his look dropping to the two women on the bench, the brims of their bonnets touching occasionally as they talked.
The key to the entire future of the Vandestile estate sat half a furlong away.
He needed that land.
After a half hour of their chatter, Lady Alton stood from the bench, moving toward the south side of the park and her waiting coach. Lady Desmond stayed in place on the bench, reaching into a burlap pouch and flicking out the last crumbs to the lingering pigeons.
Rorrick rushed across the park in a hundred long strides.
He hadn’t even stopped in front of Lady Desmond before she peered up at him from under the wide brim of her satin-trimmed bonnet.
“You walk faster than I imagined you could.”
Rorrick glanced back over his shoulder to the tree he had been loitering half behind. He looked to Lady Desmond. “I did not hide my presence very well?”
“You were making an attempt to hide? Then you are not very good at subterfuge, my lord.”
He shrugged. “I was not about to risk Lady Alton’s ire again by approaching you without her approval. If I had truly hidden from the two of you and then approached you, she would have had my head for good.” He nodded toward the retreating Alton carriage. “I can only assume her vacant seat was her blessing for me to approach.”
“Possibly.” The streaks of honey in her brown eyes glowed in the cold midday sun as she looked up at him. “It depends upon what you wish to say to me.”
A test. One he had better get right.
He looked about the park for a moment. His gaze dropped to her, searching for her eyes under the wide brim of her hat. “Can I begin with an apology?”
“That would be a start.”
“Then I apologize. I would like to explain.”
Her gloved hands came together in her lap, settling on top of the empty burlap bag. “I do not think explanations will change my mind on the matter of your rudeness.”
She was setting herself against him. Setting hard and fast.
He stepped closer, the shiny black toes of his boots almost touching her fine wool skirts. “You were right, Lady Desmond. I did judge you. But I judged you all wrong. I made assumptions upon your trade. Assumptions I had no right to make.”
“Why did you make them?”
“I knew the Revelry’s Tempest was a gaming hall. I knew its proprietress was a woman. But when I met you…I was not prepared.”
“Prepared for what?”
“For you to be a striking woman.”
Her look did not waver. “Do not pander to me, Lord Vandestile. It will not work.”
“It is no pander. When you walked into that drawing room, I immediately made an assumption about how you ran your gaming house based upon your person.”
“So I look like a harlot?”
“No. But in my experience a woman possessing your beauty is either kept by one man or is a keeper of many men. It is rare to be neither.” His hands lifted, palms upward. “So I assumed. And I should not have.”
She stared at him for a long moment, the golden color of her eyes deepening as her look pierced him. A long breath passed, and then she motioned to the bench with her left hand. “That will do. You may sit if you wish. I find my neck cricking as I look up at you.”
A silent exhale, and Rorrick turned and sat, leani
ng back against the flat vertical rungs of iron. The bars cut into his shoulder blades, uncomfortable to say the least. He glanced at Lady Desmond, noting her erect posture, far from the back bars. Of course it was uncomfortable. The English didn’t lounge, didn’t dare allow their shoulders to come near the backing of a seat. At least not in public.
A flash flickered through his mind, a vision of Lady Desmond with her dark hair draped long over her shoulders, no obtuse hat in sight, and leaning back on a bench such as this in a secluded nook, laughing. Easy.
The thought flickered away. Lady Desmond had never lounged in her life.
“Was your intention to sit here in silence, Lord Vandestile?”
He looked to Lady Desmond. Her honey-brown eyes were watching him intently, the crinkles around her eyes perplexed. How long had he just made her wait in awkward silence?
He cleared his throat. “When I spoke to you of having pretenses, Lady Desmond—”
“Was that before or after you called me a fraud?”
“Before.” He sighed. “You do not intend to make this easy, do you?
“No.”
He shifted slightly on the bench, his chest turning so he could look at her directly. “Please, Lady Desmond, I realize the offense I have caused, but I would like for you to understand.”
The hard set of her eyes softened slightly and she nodded. “Do explain.”
“Can I speak to you of whores without my rudeness held against me?”
She guffawed, her gloved hand covering her mouth. “I do believe you are the first person to ever ask me such a thing. And I have entertained many odd requests.” She glanced around the park as her hand fell from her full lips that had lifted into a smile. “Continue forth. I do not imagine I could hold such conversation against you after such a warning.”
“Good. Because it is the best way I can explain my rudeness.” He turned even more directly to her, his right arm draping along the back of the bench. She flinched slightly, leaning forward as though he had invaded her space.
Another misstep.
But he kept his arm in place, forging forward. “I like to deal with people plainly, Lady Desmond. Without subterfuge and maneuvers. Where I come from, whores are almost always the most straightforward, plainspoken people—their trade demands little else. A need. A transaction. And both parties walk away happy, each getting succinctly to the point of the matter.”
“If I were to guess, my lord, I imagine it is the same for prostitutes everywhere.”
“I suppose you are correct.” He shrugged. “And that is always how I have cared to deal with people. Directly and succinctly. I do not lie. I do not attempt to outmaneuver. I do not hold favors.”
“And how does all of this explain your rudeness to me the other evening?”
“My initial conclusions of you were false, and that is where I went astray.” He offered an apologetic shrug. “I thought you were a proprietress of a whore and gaming house, and one that possessed a full armor of airs about yourself. For lack of a more delicate way to say it, I wanted to speak with the prostitute and not the proprietress when I was in your drawing room. Women with airs are difficult to deal with and I was set on stripping you of your pretenses before we began negotiations on the swath of Vandestile land—all so I could strike an honest and direct deal with you.”
“And the false airs would have gotten in the way of such a transaction?”
“Yes.”
The top of her bonnet, her head, leaned to the side as she stared at him. “This approach—this directness—this works for you?”
“It does. At least in America. Here, it is not as efficient. Nothing is as efficient.” He glanced about them, his eyes landing on a couple strolling along the far end of the park. “But I usually get people to do what I want. And I usually do that by speaking plainly to them.”
“So people find you trustworthy?”
He looked to her. “They do. At least in America they do.”
“Interesting.” Her look travelled to the cold pond set in the distance as she tightened the collar of her pelisse about her neck.
He stared at her, truly looking at the person before him. She was a beautiful woman—with her dark, almost black hair and porcelain skin. Underneath the wide brim, her bonnet sat higher along the crown of her head and it framed her hair and face perfectly. The way her hairline sloped in a gentle curve along her forehead. Her warm brown eyes that held depths of gold. Soft. The contrast of colors about her was stark, yet the whole of her was soft. Gentle.
He hadn’t seen that in her before. Probably because he had only bothered to acknowledge she was an associate to deal with.
“How well do you know your native country, my lord?”
Her look still faraway, the question took him aback. “America?”
“Yes. Specifically, the Carolinas—possibly Virginia. There are mountains there?” Her eyes stayed trained on the pond. “The blue mountains, is that what they are called?”
“Close enough. And I know the land well. I own land and mines in the mountains.”
She looked at him. “So you know the towns well? The people?”
His suspicion spiked. This wasn’t a normal turn of conversation. Nor was the look in her eyes—curious, plotting. His words slowed, hesitant. “As well as any who travels the area.”
Her golden eyes pinned him. “And you get people to do what you want?”
His left eyebrow cocked as he gave a slight nod.
“How badly do you want the Vandestile land, my lord?”
Rorrick relaxed—she was ready to negotiate. She was going about it in an odd way, but at least she was open to dealing with him. A success.
He offered a light, noncommittal smile. “Do you have a proposal, my lady?”
“I do.” Her hands clasped in her lap, her shoulders pulling back.
For a moment, he thought she would continue without prompting, her mouth opening, but then a streak of terror flashed in her eyes and her mouth clamped shut.
As quickly as the terror had appeared, it vanished.
“What is your proposal, Lady Desmond?”
“I would like you to take me to America, Lord Vandestile.”
~~~
“You what?”
If her request wasn’t so serious, Cass would have laughed at the look of shock and horror on Lord Vandestile’s face. This, from a man who spoke of whores not minutes ago with her.
She stifled a sigh. “Forgive me, my lord, but I understood you wanted me to speak plainly. Did I mistake your mettle for such things?”
“Mistake my mett—I did ask for forthri—but Amer—America?” His head bobbed between a shake and nod, not sure which to settle on as his stunted words spilled fast.
“Yes.”
His head swiveled, his eyes searching the park. Not a soul was within earshot. Not a single person to save him from her request.
He straightened, leaning away from her as his hand slipped off the back of the bench.
Finally, room for her to breathe. The man had sat far too close. So close she could not avoid his eyes that unnerved her to her very core.
She had to remind herself he didn’t know her, didn’t know who she was, what she had done. That he had judged her so blatantly in their first meeting told her he had no interest in her beyond the Vandestile land she held. So this could work. It could. He could be the one to take her to America.
His gaze landed on her, his eyes narrowing. “What game do you play, Lady Desmond? Why would you need me to bring you to America?”
“I don’t need you to just bring me there. I need you as a guide.” Her mouth slipped shut, hoping it was enough.
It wasn’t.
“A guide for what, Lady Desmond?”
Her look met his. There was no holding back—the suspicion in the blue of his eyes had grown so thick, she would never convince him of this without telling him more. She took a deep breath. “I need you to help me find someone—two people that are lost.”
“And they are lost in America?”
“Yes.”
“Do they want to be found?”
She paused at his words, her head wrenching to the side. It took a long breath for her to answer. “I do not know.”
He leaned toward her on the bench. So close, she could feel the warmth of his body, of his breath around her face. “Have you not considered the possibility that if these people you seek are half a world away, they might not want to be found?”
Her shoulders snapped backward, her spine stiffening. “I have not. And frankly, it does not matter if they want to be found or not. I intend to do so.”
“So this is about you, and not them?”
She shrugged, her gaze going to the shoulder of his dark overcoat as she refused to meet his eyes. She willed him to sit upright and concede back her proper space. “One might say.”
For a long moment he stared at her, his look boring a hole into her temple. She managed to ignore it with minimal squirming.
His voice dropped low. “You said you would speak plainly, Lady Desmond, yet you will need to say much more than you have in order to gain my assistance.”
“No.” Her look whipped to him. “I don’t think I do, Lord Vandestile. Do you want the land or not? This is the deal I am prepared to offer. The land is yours if you take me to America and help me find these two people. I will pay for any expenses we incur. But this is what my demand is.”
“You think to trust me—a stranger, for this task?”
“Lady Alton has assured me you are trustworthy.”
“Is she a good judge of character?”
“Better than you.” The barb landed pointedly, and Cass’s mouth stretched to a line, though she could not force a smile. “You have heard my proposal, my lord. Please do think upon it.” She stood, smoothing the wool of her thick pelisse as she turned to him. “Do let me know when you have made a decision.”
Her chin tilting upward, she walked away with as much grace as she could muster over the heavy weight swelling in her stomach.
What in blazes had she just done?
{ Chapter 4 }
Of Risk & Redemption: A Revelry’s Tempest Novel Page 3
